theatre & human rights

Jul 27

LyfBooks, Reviews, Work, arts, theatre Books, human rights, paul rae, review, theatre No Comments

9/10

Wow. I don’t even really know where to begin. I picked up this book on a whim – I’ve not read much lately about theatre theory and so it intrigued me, especially as it deals with human rights, something that’s been a bit on my radar lately in regards to the G20 stuff that’s been happening.

The first thing I must say is that Paul Rae is a very skilled communicator, and thinks highly of his audience while not being blind to the fact that less educated [read "me"] people will definitely pick up this book. I think people interested in human rights and/or theatre should give this a read (it only took me 3 hours to get through, and that was with several distractions). It was an intense 3 hours though, one should be ready to give it one’s full attention.

Rae sets before his reader a good overview of where he’s taking them and how he plans to get there. Then, he begins the journey. It’s one that is informed, insightful, challenging and enlightening.

I guess what I am taking away from it, at this point and reading, is that human rights and theatre are complimentary but need to be careful how they associate; some theatrical devices don’t serve the human rights stories well at all and some human rights stories just simply can’t effectively be dramatized. There’s more to it than this obviously and I apologize to Paul Rae for such a poorly simple and obvious take-away. If you are interested in theatre and its wider reaches, then pick up this book and do a better job of recommending it than I do.

Some take away quotes for ya’ll:

“…poverty, resource scarcity and ecocide are linked to human dignity in ways that oblige a rethinking of the individualistic basis of traditional human rights.” (p.72)

“We are not free and the sky can still fall on our heads. And above all else, theatre is made to teach us this.” (Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double p.60)

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